Survey of entrants to nurse training schools and of student-nurse wastage in the Birmingham region.

One of the most urgent problems confronting the National Health Service is that of providing sufficient nursing staff. It will be possible to maintain the hospitals at the existing level of efficiency only if it is possible to provide enough adequately trained nurses in future years. To a large extent the quality and quantity of the nursing staffs, as of the Health Service in general, must depend on how much the community can afford to spend. Doubtless financial difficulties in Great Britain will restrict expenditure on the hospitals for several years to come, though annual salary increments with the rising cost of provisions, fuel, light, and water may involve greater expenditure. Meanwhile more lucrative opportunities in industry or government employment may adversely influence readiness to engage in nursing. The hospitals cannot compete with industry or the civil service in so far as recruitment depends on remuneration offered; and the hours of duty required by a hospital are more exacting. Furthermore, we must not neglect population trends which affect not only the future pattern of hospitalized disease but also the potential reservoir of persons from which the nursing service draws its recruits. Current estimates show that in 1960 there will be almost half a million fewer females between the ages of 18 to 30 years inclusive, than in 1951. For this reason alone we may expect that recruitment of women to the nursing services during the remaining years of this decade will present increasing difficulties.